Educators understand and apply knowledge of student growth and development.
In the beginning of the program we were introduced to the idea of learning progressions, or scaffolding. If you go back in my blog posts to the beginning, you will see my initial thoughts on it.
I remember when I was first taught about learning progressions I was thinking that it made so much sense, but it just was not something I had really put much thought into before entering the program. I also remember thinking that the thought process of breaking down learning into smaller and smaller components in order to present the information in a way that the students can build off of was incredible! I think that this new way of thinking about teaching and learning has actually heavily influenced my own pedagogy and way of planning lessons.
In my EDUC 491 10-week practicum, I was able to put what I learned about learning progressions into practice with 28 different students. At first, I found it difficult to understand what the students had already mastered and what was new to them and therefore had some clunky lessons. But, by the end of practicum, I had my methods nailed down to a system that worked well for myself and the class.
First, I would do some sort of a group pre-assessment based solely on the content from the curriculum. I liked to do this as a group in a dialogue-based fashion because it avoided giving the students the impression that they were going to be learning something difficult or foreign. As a part of this conversation, I would even ask them directly “what do you know about fractions?” and then play around with what they told me on the board. This exploration of what they already knew and felt confident with would also serve as a refresher of content that they may have learned many months ago or in a previous grade. Once we would come to a natural conclusion of what they already knew, I would challenge them with bits and pieces of the new content, asking first to see if anyone knew, and then if they didn’t, guiding them through how to take what they already know and manipulating it into a new structure.
My next couple of lessons would follow a similar pattern: a heavy focus on what they had already mastered with small extensions into the new content. Then, once that new content is mastered, using that new portion of their learning to extend into a deeper concept. I would repeat this pattern until we reached the goal of mastering the content from the grade appropriate curriculum itself.
However, at this point, I didn’t feel right going straight to summative assessment and then moving on to new content. I think it’s important to circle back around to the original content that they had mastered in a prior grade. This would look like a couple activities or tasks where they would take the beginning of their learning and then connect it with the big picture of their final learning. I liked incorporating this into my units because by the time we got to the end of the unit, the content looked much different than the original refresher work we did in the beginning, and then by connecting the two, the students would better recognize how their learning is interwoven so that their learning is more linear rather than chopped up.
It is also important to note that I didn’t ever feel right progressing through the learning until all students were able to connect prior knowledge to the new content. I think that if the information and content is disjointed during their learning process, then they would not be able to fully use their developing skills as the content deepened or became more difficult. This would mean that while some students were able to grasp it immediately, some others required more time to sort out their thoughts and to experiment with the content. But because I liked to make sure that everyone understood each step before progressing, I learned that it was important to provide the students who understood more quickly room for extending their learning. This way, some students developed a further-than-grade-level understanding, while others still had the chance to master the content.